Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing: An insider’s stand against fracking

OpenCanada is featuring excerpts from all five Shaughnessy Cohen finalists this week. Today, Andrew Nikiforuk's Slick Water: Fracking and One Insider’s Stand Against the World’s Most
Powerful Industry.

One of five finalists for this year's Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing, below we feature award-winning, Calgary-based
writer Andrew Nikiforuk and his book, Slick Water: Fracking and One
Insider’s Stand Against the World’s Most Powerful Industry.

“Jessica Ernst, an oil patch consultant, lived a quiet life in rural
Alberta, until one day she realized she could light her tap water on fire. A
major Canadian oil company had fracked hundreds of gas wells near her home,
contaminating the village’s water supply,” the jury writes.

“Told through the lens of his
inspiring protagonist, Andrew Nikiforuk’s book explores the history of
fracking, as well as the environmental and human toll that our society’s
obsession with oil has wrought. Slick Water is
an impressive piece of investigative journalism and storytelling.”

‘Is it worth a fight?’

While Ernst talked to rural Newfoundlanders,
Brent O’Neil, an international oil-patch driller, sat down in Calgary with
lawyer Glenn Solomon to get some legal advice. O’Neil’s mother, Ann Craft,
owned an eighty-acre farm near Ponoka, Alberta, and in 2012 her land got
fracked. When Quicksilver resources worked over four shallow coal seams north of
Craft’s home, a fracture went out of zone, lifted up her front porch, and
buckled several outbuildings. Alberta Environment had promised to investigate
all the wells drilled within a two-kilometre radius, and also to catalogue the
fracking fluids used. It had even ordered a hydrogeological study. But
Quicksilver talked the regulator out of such rigor, and no proper investigation
ever took place. To add insult to injury, a trucking company delivered tainted
produced water to Craft’s cistern. She bathed in the toxic brew, and it nearly
killed her.

After two years of wrangling with the
government, Brent O’Neil wanted to know what chances his mother might have if
she sued the regulators for negligence. O’Neil taped his conversation with
Solomon on his iPhone, because he planned to share it with his mother later.

“Take a step back,” Solomon advised O’Neil
in fatherly tones. “I told you on the phone, I act for ERCB when they’re sued
on these types of things. There’s only one such case in Alberta that I’m aware
of where they’re using outside counsel, which is me at the moment. And that’s
an oil spill out in the Rosebud area, which has become more of a political
grandstanding issue that a legal dispute.”

“Over an oil spill?” asked O’Neill for
clarification.

“This was a fracking case,” Solomon
replied.

“Oh,” said O’Neill.

“It was alleged contamination of a water
well. Doesn’t appear to be any personal injuries. And …"

“Just groundwater contamination?”
interjected O’Neill.

“Groundwater contamination,” confirmed
Solomon. He continued: “Encana is the oil company. They’ve said, ‘We deny that
we’ve done anything but we’ll give you a lifetime supply of potable water
anyway, because we just don’t care and we don’t want to fight with you.’ You
know, it’s Encana, and they have all the money in the world. And Alberta
Environment and the ERCB have been sued in that one as well. I can tell you
it’s a case that is seven years old. I haven’t yet filed a statement of Defense
because it’s been tied up in preliminary application … because that’s what
happens when you start suing Alberta Environment and ERCB.”

Solomon went on: “We keep on telling the
plaintiff’s lawyers, look, if you get rid of us [the dispute with the
regulators], Encana is going to resolve this with you, cause they always do.
That’s what they do. Encana has said, “Look, you know, we’re happy to pay for
this, without admitting or denying liability … You know, it’s … this is a
rounding error on our balance sheet, for God’s sakes. Would you stop being a
nuisance?’”

“But the PR and the bad publicity that
comes from it for everybody, is that even worth it?” asked O’Neill.

“Encana, ERCB, and Alberta Environment just
don’t care about that either,” responded Solomon. “They just don’t care about
bad publicity because … what tends to happen is that the people who go yapping
to the media are typically seen as nutcases.”

O’Neill then asked a direct question. “On
your experience with fracking and stuff, where, what’s the success rate?”
O’Neill noted that Quicksilver had had a claim filed against them by Dale
Zimmerman, the Wetaskiwin farmer, involving fracking and groundwater
contamination. “What’s the Canadian climate for that kind of stuff? Is it worth
a fight?”

“I’m not aware of any cases that have gone
to trial where fracking damage has been successfully proved,” Solomon replied.
“But, again, most of these cases resolve. ‘Okay, we damaged your water well.
We’ll just set you up with potable water through a tank system forever, because,
you know, we just spent a million dollars drilling this well that we made a
hundred million on. And it’s costing us an extra three hundred thousand. We’re
okay.’”

Solomon elaborated on the industry’s
attitude: “‘You know, we don’t need to litigate with you, we don’t even need to
know that it was our fault. We’re just happy to pay you. And by the way, by
doing that you shut up, the regulators stay off our back, we get to do it again
down the street.’ And so that’s the oil company approach on these [things]. The
people who typically are suing are getting a lot of resistance, and it’s a
knock-’em-down, drag-’em-out brawl, where the oil companies are not resolving
it. If you drag in the regulators, I can tell you from experience … it’s Word
War III. And Encana, Alberta Environment, and the ERCB, as it turns out, all
have effectively unlimited resources. You know they have office towers full of
experts. They have bank accounts full of cash. The cost of having even an army
of lawyers is something that they wouldn’t even notice, and they don’t have to
answer for it. So anyone who wants to pick that fight is literally crazy.”

OpenCanada is featuring excerpts from all
five Shaughnessy Cohen finalists this week. Here is Sheila Watt-Cloutier’sThe
Right to Be Cold: One Woman’s Story of Protecting Her Culture, the Arctic, and
the Whole Planet.

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